Kinkshaming

Film: Crash (1996)
Format: Loaned DVD on basement television

Crash, the David Cronenberg film and not the maligned 2005 Best Picture winner, is a film I have been looking for for some time. Cronenberg is the king of body horror, and his films are always at least visually interesting. Crash is based on the novel of the same name by J.G. Ballard, who is an author I like a great deal, almost despite his subject matter. I have a fondness for Ballard in no small part because I discussed his books in my comps exam for my Master’s degree. Ballard often deals with human atrocities and physical degradation, a self-destructive impulse that he seems to feel is a natural part of human nature.

Crash is absolutely in the heart of that element of Ballard’s work. Much of his writing looks at people living lives on the extreme edge of existence, barely surviving, but seeing how far they can go while still managing to be alive. Crash specifically is about people who get erotic satisfaction from car accidents, both those that they see or witness and those that they are involved in. It’s as perverse a fetish movie as Salo in some ways, the sort of film you watch with the blinds drawn (not unlike Cruising).

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Original Screenplay 2005

The Contenders:

Crash (winner)
Good Night and Good Luck
Match Point
The Squid and the Whale
Syriana

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Director 2005

The Contenders:

Ang Lee: Brokeback Mountain (winner)
Bennett Miller: Capote
Paul Haggis: Crash
George Clooney: Good Night and Good Luck
Steven Spielberg: Munich

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Picture 2005

The Contenders:

Brokeback Mountain
Capote
Crash (winner)
Good Night and Good Luck
Munich

Unsafe at Any Speed

Film: Crash
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

Going in to Crash, I knew only that it was controversial. The film itself is somewhat controversial, at least. What’s really controversial is that it beat Brokeback Mountain for Best Picture at the Oscars. Whenever something like that happens, there’s fallout, and so within a matter of moments Crash became filma non grata. Had Brokeback walked off with the coveted prize, this film would be remembered as a solid, well-made film about everyday, casual racism. Instead, it’s put in the same category as films like Around the World in 80 Days. It’s a poser, a film that’s not as good as the Academy thinks. Or, more damning, it’s an Oscar winner because it was the safe choice. It’s about a topic Hollywood loves, and it doesn’t involve any of that…y’know…gay stuff. The truth might actually be simpler—nothing with Tony Danza in it deserves to be Best Picture.

Crash is one of those films with a couple of dozen stories going on at the same time. It’s the sort of film that makes me wonder why I started doing summaries of what I watch in the course of these reviews. So, I’m not going to, because it would take me the length of this review plus another half just to get through all of the characters, all of the stories, and all of the ways these different stories meet up. Yes, it’s one of those movies, where each of the many stories takes a different twist and intersects (or, perhaps, “crashes into”) another one. Each character meets up with a few of the others at times, and we get everyone’s story, at least in part.